Note: this was written at 30,000 feet, cabin pressure may have had an effect on your narrator.
//

In the still of the morning where all you have are your thoughts to
guide you, you could find me sitting the JetBlue terminal at Cleveland
Hopkins International Airport.

My meticulous packing got me through the security checkpoints without
fail. A nice and easy goodbye void of tears on my end worked well as I
waved goodbye to my dad from the TSA line.
The Libertines' "Music When The Lifhts Go Out" soundtracks my wait as I
board in a swift 15 minutes. Boarding pass in hand I stop to grab a
bottle of water, and some M's to sustain and of course the day's New
York Times.
The story I'm reading in the terminal is about Amy Winehouse. I'm
arguably the only twenty something within a 50 me radius reading the
newspaper.
Everyone around me is as calm as Hindu cows, chomping and biting away at
their overpriced airport sandwiches and sipping designer water bottles,
for to fly it takes some money.
The flight arrives at 8:30 and the baggage handlers are quick like
rabbits getting the old things off in favor of the new passengers'
belongings.
And in the depths of the airport where only those who work there know
the score, is my guitar. The thing that will be my ticket.
I'm sitting in my seat by 9:10. It's a cloudy day, my favorite kind and
all around me are people lounging in air conditioned seats waiting to
take the sky. Boston is the first stop. I fell asleep for a brief 20 minutes and we pulled into JFK before I could orient myself.
If you wake up in a different place, are you a different person?

As I take off from Cleveland The Clash's Rock The Casbah music video comes on the TV in the back of the seat in front of me. It's a good omen.
When you're up in the sky all the houses look all gridded and perfect. The clouds covering the cities below make it look like another planet up here. Like a perfect snow covered billowing dreamland you only read about in Poems.
In the sea of white fluffy clouds the gray ones are easy to point out. You can clock them miles above, they're different. The patches are dense and foggy. It's just like you can look at a group of people and see the ones with trouble in their eyes.

My stay in Boston was a 10 minute sprint from one plane to the other. Sweating and panting I sat down and took a breath, for in an hour I'd be home: New York City.
When a flight stabilizes at 30 thousand feet it's like you're not moving at all. Passing over the Atlantic looks like a kiddy pool from up here. It makes you realize how small you are.
You slide by homes and cities, states and oceans and it almost seems careless with people checking their phones and reading books when the world is literally flying by outside the window.
And when you look at that world for too long, people start staring. I spotted the skyline at around 12:22 and I knew things were going to get better.